Thursday, 7 April 2011

Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full Product?

Q8) EVALUATION: looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product

From the preliminary task, what I have learnt about our audience during this duration was that even though I had a rough idea of who our audiences were, it never really showed through our final rough cut film. It is because I always thought that when we were making our final rough cut of our Thriller movie, it would please both the male and female audience members because firstly, we targeted the males through the use of crime and violence, and the females through the sophisticated storyline and the suspense created during the shower scene where the false plateau was created, this use of intertextuality feature from the Thriller film ‘Psycho’, hindered that something was going to happen but it never did.

But I soon realised during our Final Thriller movie when the whole class watched it, that we were not really attracting the female audiences because some of them, for example ‘Demi’ thought that the “use of both dominant male actors, brought an issue of alienating the female audiences in believing that this was targeted to a male audience”. In some ways I thought that was true because we weren’t really thinking of the female audiences for our film, because our Thriller film is a CRIME/ACTION THRILLER, which from my research, is a film that mainly pleases the male audiences. When the whole of the media groups went to watch each others Final Thriller Movies on the cinema called "Screen at the Green", I wanted to see what the audiences reaction would be especially the female side because they might have a different reaction in interpreting our film from the small screen in the classroom to the big screen in the cinema. First I received the males response of the film. 'Faysal' said that "the Thriller movie was very dramatic during the ending when Ayub suffocates Julien, the use of no sound or music at this part was very striking and scary towards an audience member". Then I received a response from a female audience member. 'Chika' said that "the movie was very good with the whole dramatic and suspenseful scene during the end, but it made me feel too scared because I would have paid and watched a more sensible and comedy Thriller movie".

From the feedback that I gotten when they watched our Thriller movie, i expected good praises from the males because this film was targeted at them, but the female response was mixed showing that some females do like this type of movie but from the research, the majority did not like to watch our Thriller movie.

In the preliminary movie, the piece of technology that helped us to create this product was “Final Cut Pro”. We imported all the clips onto Final Cut Pro where we edited the scenes. All of this knowledge and skills that I picked up from this task, I used during the actual editing of our Thriller opening. The issues that I found was making the scenes flow smoothly with the next scene without any awkward stillness and camera shots.

Here is a low angle shot of Ahmed just finishing drying his hands on a towel, this exact scene ends with his hands together. But then suddenly, we get a very awkward jump shot, where his action from the previous shot with his hands together, has changed very awkwardly with him having his hands to his sides. We also get a difference in lighting. From the first shot, its very white with brightness, but then in the second shot we get a more purple colour to the scene. These mistakes we learnt from, by not repeating this in the final Thriller movie scenes.

From Preliminary Movie

﻿ Unlike Our Final Thriller Movie, where we used Live Type for the Titles, we didn’t use it for our preliminary film because we were running out of time in doing it on Live Type. So instead we used and created the Titles on Final Cut Pro. It was much simpler and straightforward, but we didn’t get the effects that we wanted like having it fly away slowly across the screen.

﻿We made sure that in the Final Thriller Movie, we were going to have the Titles done in Live Type. We discussed thoroughly in the effects that we wanted the Titles to have for the Thriller Movie. We exchanged and experimented with ideas then Harold found the effect that was perfect. He had found the effect that brought the titles to appear and disappear across the screen.

The car scene from BBC’s “Ashes to Ashes” challenges the convention that many films have where the white evil male character is in the back seat of the car, about to attack the black or sometimes white driver. But in Ashes to Ashes, the convention is broke with the driver being a white FEMALE character. I think the reason why they chose to have a female driver was to bring another element of fear to unexpected characters to danger. Stereotypically, she is in a situation where she is very vulnerable. This shows towards an audience member such as myself, feel very sympathetic to her, because we don’t want her to get hurt. These feelings are very reduced when the driver is a male character because we believe that he can take care of himself.

We challenged the convention of the car scene in “Collateral” where the bad guy who is sitting on the back seat of the car is a white person. We challenged this by having a black person in the back seat of the car playing the bad guy. In most typical films, the convention is that the white male character is always the evil serial killer out to kill the innocent, vulnerable black guy. But we chose to oppose this rule, making a clear statement that in our Thriller movie, we have surprises and twists that make our film unique so people have a good reason in watching the film.

Scene from Preliminary Movie

Even though in the preliminary movie we didn’t use a car, we still simulated a similar situation where again we challenged the convention of a white male evil character to an Asian male evil character. We experimented with race because we felt that it would portray a message to the audience like with an Asian character, it would arouse a stereotypical persona of a terrorist. And a Black male evil character would arouse inequality of race through slavery.

From the preliminary movie, many mistakes were made which we as a group can learn from. One of the vital mistakes was the lighting issue. In the preliminary movie, we had shots where the scene started off as bright, but then it changed to a darker scene. ﻿

So from learning the experience of the lighting issue, when we came into filming our Final Thriller movies scenes, lighting was very important. Having said that, we made a major flaw with lighting on the final movie. During the bathroom scene from the intertextuality feature from “Psycho”, most of that scene was corrupted with bad lighting; it went from light to dark and then light to dark. Also, due to the steam from the hot water coming out of the shower, the lens of the camera got blurred, so the scene was very blurry. Due to this sudden failure of lighting, we as a group discussed on the outcome of that very important shower scene that corresponds to our research where we want the day to start off normally building it up as suspense like Psycho but leading it off as a false plateau. After a long discussion, we told the teacher in what we should do and our teacher said, “You just have to take that scene out because its going to look silly in your movie”. So we took that important scene out of our Thriller movie which in the end was a god idea because that scene had many flawed areas that couldn’t be used.

My skill in ICT played a huge part in the upcoming to the Final Movie because I was able to create a personalised Production Logo for our Movie. I was also able to edit pictures that were going to be blogged up which was vial to show the evidence of the work that I did in preparation of filming. My typing skills grew much more through his project because I evaluated my work a lot in detail to show why I did a specific work. I did most of the editing on the programme "Macromedia Fireworks". This programme allowed me to edit pictures in the way that i saw fit to my pleasing. This was very good and gave me an advantage over my peers in my group because i was able to flourish my editing skills to make my work stand out from thiers.

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Scene from Preliminary Movie

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Mise en scene was very important in shaping up the characters persona. From the preliminary movie, we did little concentration on the mise en scene because we had limited resources.

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Scene From Final Thriller Movie

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However though, in our final movie, we very keen on having the correct mise en scene like the unwashed cups in the sink to show that Julien’s character has something in his mind that’s bugging him so much that he’s forgetting to do the washing.

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Scene from Final Thriller Movie

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The black car to connote evil, violence, foreshadowing that something bad is going to happen in that car. Most cars like in Ashes to Ashes used a black car, in my opinion for similiar purposes.

The use of the sunglasses covering his eyes show that he has no remorse what so ever to what he is about to do, he has no emotions. The black glasses connote his black demented soul.

Sound is very important in conveying how the audience should feel. During the scene where Julien is opening the door, the music is being played to signify that something sinister I about to happen, building up that false plateau to the audience. This makes them anticipate a reaction that is going to be misleading.

Then the music stops and it goes to the real sound of the neighbourhood. This is because we make the audience hear the sound of reality so that hey go back to that relaxed feeling where we build up to the and scene to make them be jump out of their seats.